I'd go for this as it as you can do base corrections of groups of images, which you can then apply presets that then do not simply override the individual corrections of things like exposure and white balance if used as part of the preset.
Could be a huge timesaver.

I use the relative adjustments in Library all the time, and I'd love to see them extended to many of the other develop settings. Perhaps that would be easier to code than an entirely new class of presets alongside the existing preset architecture.

I implemented DevAdjust to support relative presets. Its modal (plugin) nature is somewhat alleviated by having preset keystroke menu shortcuts (Windows only) and "hot metadata" preset selection (all platforms). I'm not saying its as good as a native solution would be, but it may tide you over...

I wonder whether once people start to think of applying a relative adjustment, they may want to apply these not only with a special kind of a preset, but also with (for example) AutoSync across multiple images that are selected. So a separate kind of Autosync might put you into a new mode where when you move the tint +2 from where it was before, all the other images get +2 tint compared to where each individually was before.

However, as I see it there are many commands where the "proportionality" may need some attention - or in some cases may not even make any practical sense - regardless whether we are working directly or by preset.

For example: a relative adjustment may be recorded from one image, which happens to take the Blacks from 3 down to 2. Then this is applied to another image which currently has a Blacks value of 9. In order to feel we are making the SAME relative adjustment to that, is it better to apply the same numerical change; the same percentage change; a nonlinear change of some kind that has been designed to have a similarly strong perceptual effect; or something else?

The idea of "smart" relative adjustments I find very intriguing. If you could experiment enough to figure out what are equivalent perceptual (relative) adjustments for various settings, I may program that into DevAdjust, or Adobe might be more likely to program it into native Lr4or5. e.g. a percentage may be adequate for some settings, but others may need a different formula...

Note: your example above with tint is almost doable right now (natively) via quick develop - in grid mode its like relative auto-sync, it just doesn't include all the settings (tint is available as relative quick adjustment, but finest granularity is +5) - with the alt key you can access a few more...

I think one central difficulty is that "basic settings" and "tweak adjustments" might have to be regarded separately - a question that does not apply with Autosync at present, if auto-sync is used with images that are quite similar in the first place.

Using auto-sync across one image that is underexposed and another that is overexposed does not really work very well since however we have individually worked around these differences, will be steamrollered by the applied corrections. The perceptual meaning of a +5 change in fill light is not only different when you are going from 0 to 5, than it is when going from 5 to 10. It can also be very different even going from 0 to 5, in the context of one image with a +1 stop Exposure correction and a 0 blacks, as against another with a 0 stop Exposure and a 5 blacks. I doubt that this can be programmed around except as some kind of "compensated Auto" that would eliminate prior individual adjustments.

One can easily imagine the "shaping adjustments" such as fine WB, tint, brightness, vibrance, clarity, (parametric) tonecurve shaping, overall sharpening strength being applied successfully as a relative adjustment and in these cases, a simple numerical method would probably be fine. I am assuming these are subjective tweaks made after the basic image settings are in place, and that they would be small in magnitude - though if we want to make a rash and crude change instead, I suppose we might as well be left that option! However the greater the magnitude of the change the less it will produce the same subjective effect since we will soon exceed the comfortable envelope on certain images and soon get into clipping, noise and threshold problems that may not be apparent on our primary image.

If we stipulate that relative adjustments are specifically ABOUT being able to work across groups of more dissimilar images, then we must expect such problems more often than with our present Autosync practice.

My real point was aimed at the other adjustments such as coarse WB, Exposure, Blacks, NR, sharpening radius and threshold, and some others which IMHO are better considered as both "basic" and "individual". We set these things in order to have a "proper" image that will usefully underly the "shaping" adjustments - to the point where we are happy with the image on an objective level, and want to start making some VCs and exploring the subjective treatments that it will support. Whitepoint and blackpoint are rather technical necessities which I would not expect to manipulate as a group "beautification", nor do I think they are really amenable in their nature to that kind of approach.

So I guess a new relative-sync function needs to focus on a subset of tools only, and restrict itself to a quite low-magnitude and rolled-off power of alteration. Analogous to the gentle "relative" massaging that the parametric tonecurve applies, as distinct from the potentially huge and untrammelled and highly image-specific "absolute" things the points tonecurve is capable of.

Yeah, its really hard to come up with generic formulas for mass relative manipulation of settings with any meaningful intelligence. I do like the idea of intelligent auto-presets though, where one could say: "I want this kinda dark with lots of black clipping", then click a "do it" button and have it. Or, "I want this bright and low contrast, highlight-clipping OK", and do it, or say "I want this highly contrasty but with no blown highlights", and get that... I submitted an Idea a while ago for it: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

- the idea being to set a *smaller* set of sliders that are aimed at setting things more qualitatively, then have the analyzer compute the actual values and adjust things accordingly. DxO has something like this.

Anyway, I'm not sure why Adobe decided to go with absolute for auto-sync, since if selected photos are all starting from the same starting point, relative *is* absolute, and if they aren't starting from the same starting point, then I *never* want absolute adjustments - maybe some people do. Maybe they had relative already taken by quick-develop, so absolute seemed to be available still for auto-sync. Really dunno...

Personally, I think the best solution would be integration of library and develop modules, and integration of quick-develop with auto-sync, plus unified/simplified targeting, such that one could set things to same absolute or relative, without blinking, then slap a couple keywords on 'em without thinking too much about it...

There is a need for both types of adjustments - relative and absolute. Take white balance adjustments for example. I.E. I'll adjust a group of wedding photos to have the same "look" Depending on lighting and camera settings there are times when dialing in a white balance of 5000k on one photo will look the same as a white balance of 4500k on a different photo. Obviously sometimes it's nice to quickly dial in a white balance of the same nominal value, say 5500k for a group of photos. Other times, I just want to warm up a group of photos. Some of these photos might be at 3500K, 5500K and 6500K but I want them all to look "warmer" being able to bump each one up by 500K would save TONS of time.

Also, having the ability to take a group of photos that I've previously edited with exposure adjustments (some are +.5, -.3, +1.0 etc)... to take that group of photos and relatively brighten them up from where they currently are... brighten all photos by 1/2 stop, would be a huge time saver.

I use Camera RAW in CS5 and would like relative adjustments as well as relative preset capability added to ACR and Lightroom. I would like this for all 11 parameters in the basic panel of Camera RAW. This would speed up adjusting images. I would make presets that allow me to increase or decrease each parameter by a fixed delta. Some of these would include adjusting multiple parameters at the same time like this example - increase contrast by 20 units and decrease saturation by 5 units.

Noise reduction in the shadows, midtones and highlights with different values (good for those noisy shadows with cameras that have good read noise but low DR so it wont kill detail in the midtones and highlights (there is a retouch tool but its tedious to use it in all shadows you want). This is for lightroom 4 beta.

Way back in LR 1x, I was asking for the Crop tool to be moved into the Library module, since I mainly need to do quick relative adjustments (mostly exposure, temperature, tint, and fill light), plus crops, and the sliders are considerably slower for those adjustments. I met a couple of key Adobe people at a tradeshow a few years back, and they assured me that moving Crop into the library module could never happen.

More recently, I realized that since switching between modules is really what I'm objecting to, a better approach would be to have relative adjustment presets available as an option in the Develop module -- I posted to that effect about a year ago. Good to see some more support on that, especially since I wouldn't think it would be difficult to implement. Maybe just an overall switch in Preferences, or even better, being able to toggle between sliders and buttons for each adjustment. Make sense?

Is it really so hard to hit the "R" key to get into Crop (from anywhere in Lightroom) and then the "G" to get back to Grid or "E" to get back to Loupe once you're done cropping? If you think about it that way does it raelly matter where Crop officially sits?

It's an additional unnecessary step. Also, especially on my (slower) laptop, it's not an instantaneous change back and forth between modules -- as much as a couple of seconds each time. Doesn't sound like much, but when I'm editing hundreds of images at midnight and have to be up at 6 AM, every minute counts. Besides, if things were as I suggest, then I could do everything in Develop, including the occasional adjustments that don't even exist in Library.

I don't see how it's an extra step. Even if the crop tool was in the Library module, you would still have to enable it, which means clicking or typing something. Whether in your head you are changing modules or simply enabling a tool, it's still only one step. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for faster, I just don't see how it can be faster than one step...

Please re-read the second paragraph in my original post. I'm suggesting the option of relative adjustments in the Develop module. If those were enabled, I could stay in the Develop module and avoid the extra step and cumulative additional time of going back and forth between modules. Again, it may not seem like much, but it sure adds up over several hundred images at a time. As it is now, I must either constantly switch back and forth between modules, or make two passes through all the images, once in Library, and then again in Develop.

Either way. whether the relative adjustments were an option in the Develop module (preferred), or if Crop was moved to the Library module, I would still be saving a great deal of time in the long run.

btw - I'd even be happy with using a modifier, such as [ALT] to hold down to make slider movements relative in Auto-Sync mode. Surely that wouldn't take long to implement while a more comprehensive solution is developed

It may be the case that "Blacks" and "Whites" adjustments are always relative in LR4. They seem to feature auto black point setting and auto highlight recovery so "0" appears to mean something different for every image. Any change from "0" is thus a relative change.

AFAIC, such auto behaviour should be optional.

I don't know whether "shadows" and "highlights" may also be regarded as relative adjustment sliders.

Well, I would like an option in wich I can add an adjustements sum not copy from others. I ́ll try to explain:

When I ́m going to send a copy to the laboratory for print, I need to do same changes in all my photos, 5+ more red, 10+ more yellow, because of copy shows in paper the same colors than the monitor.

In lightroom you can only copy the same adjustments than the other photo or preset, you can ́t add a sum and create a prest with that.

For example: I would like a preset in wich colors option, adds 5 more red, 3 more green... etc. If I have a photo with +30 yellow, the presets would give me 35 in total. But now, If I do a copy from an adjusment from other photo or a preset, the preset give me a total number not a sum.

I hope you can understand that I ́m trying to say. My english is not good.

My mis-type. I meant to say that you can select multiple images in the Library module and then apply relative adjustments to all of them in a batch with Quick Develop. I realize there is no way to do this in a preset where all adjustments are specific to a numerical setting rather than relative to the existing setting.

With soft proofing so well done in LR4, the value of Relative Adjustments in Develop makes more sense than ever. Think of the value of characterizing Changes in develop settings to, for example, print to a certain paper - and applying those changes to a series of files that will be printed to the printer/paper combination

As to whether the Relative Adjustments should due done only as a Preset, or as a Sync Settings function, both approaches would have merit.

HSL and Saturation come to mind. Further, I'd ilk ego be able to more precisely quantify the relative adjustments that, say, a Soft Proofing process led me to make and save those relative changes as a preset that could due applied to a series of files. Unless I misunderstand, and I may well misunderstand, we can't do those things now.

Good to know, Rob. While I really appreciate your work, and that of others, writing the plugin codes, it is still attractive that these features be natively incorporated. At one time at least, those plugs had Windows-only support.

But back to what can now be done in Library using relative adjustments, are those relative changes able to be saved & applied as a preset?

There is another workaround – You can apply relative settings now using the Graduated Filter local adjustment tool.

Drag the Graduated Filter pin and guides off of the picture canvas (i.e. in the border area). which selects the entire image 100%. Make any combination of available adjustments using the Graduated filter panel and save as a Develop preset with only 'Graduated Filter' and perhaps 'Process Version' selected.

The only potential down side is that this local adjustment will not be reflected in the global adjustment tools.